| Dec-20-08 | | Karpova: This might be Sigmund Wolk (born Zygmunt Wolk) from Germany.
Born: 1911.12.09 in St. Petersburg, Russia
Pseudonym: Sigmund Wotkowsky |
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Aug-21-19
 | | jessicafischerqueen:
<Karpova> Yes, it appears you are correct. In the crosstable for the <Klaus Junge Memorial 1946> he is listed as "Wotkowsky." Donaldson, John. "Elmars Zemgalis: Grandmaster Without the Title" (Pomeranian Pubishing 2001), p.16 |
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| Aug-21-19 | | whiteshark: International Master. Born Russian (Sigismund Julianowitsch Volk)* and a very strong blitz player. Winner of the FRG Cup (Dähne-Pokal) in 1957/58 and 1959/60.
In the 1950s he played against up to 15 opponents in southern Germany blind-simultan. https://www.schachbund.de/person/pl... *I haven't translated the name from German into English here. Don't know the original Russian. |
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Aug-21-19
| | jessicafischerqueen:
<whiteshark>
Do you think that "Volk" might be a Germanized name for "Wotowsky"? Wotowsky sounds like a Polish name to me, but some Polish families may have been residing in St. Petersburg. If only <Karpova> were still active here she might be able to tell us where she got her information from. "Zygmunt" is a Polish spelling? At least, "Zygmunt Szulce" was a Polish chess player. "Sigmund" would be a Germanized form as you know, but "Sigismund" with the "Julianiwitsch" is a little mysterious. <Karpova> mentions a "pseudonym" <Sigmund Wotkowsky> and she was not in the habit of publishing information without taking it from a decent, or at the very least plausible source. As far as the information from three sources now on this page goes, I don't really see a contradiction between your information and <Karpova's>. Sadly, <John Donaldson> doesn't list his source for the <Klaus Junge Memorial 1946> crosstable, but it did prove helpful in solving another troubling mystery. <365Chess.com> lists "Leo Forgacs" as contestant for this event, but <Donaldson's> crosstable lists "Fleischmann". At cg.com we have Leo Fleischmann Forgacs and W Fleischmann , so it was easy to see the reason behind the 365Chess.com mistake. I sent them a correction slip today. Forgacs died in 1930, so I doubt he played at the <Klaus Junge Memorial>. I don't know who uploaded the W Fleischmann <Klaus Junge Memorial> games here at cg.com, but <Donaldson> does not give a "W" in his crosstable, nor does he for the <Zemgalis v Fleischmann> pgn he publishes in his book. I wonder where our uploader got the "W" from?
At any rate I don't seen any problem with uploading the <Wotokowsky v Zemgalis> pgn <Donaldson> gives in his book, since we already have "him" as <Sigmund Wolk> on this page. I'll be using that name when I submit the pgn. I am currently working on Elmars Zemgalis , so I was very pleased to see how much work you have already done on him at cg.com. I read several of your posts today, whilst constructing Game Collection: Elmars Zemgalis Games . I expect I will run in to many more of your posts before finishing this collection. |
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| Aug-21-19 | | whiteshark: <jessicafischerqueen: ...<<Karpova> mentions a "pseudonym" <Sigmund Wotkowsky>>> Anders Thulin's booklet of chess pseudonyms and signatures has <Sigmund Wotkowsky>, referring to <G1 Gaige: Chess Personalia, McFarland & Co., Inc., Jefferson NC,
1987> as source.
Back-transscibing <Sigismund Julianowitsch Volk> into Cyrillic is <Сигизмунд Юлианович Волк> which leads us to this source after a search:
https://labas.livejournal.com/10537...
I know that this is about him, but I can't say anything about the content, as I neither speak nor understand Russian. |
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Aug-22-19
| | jessicafischerqueen: <whiteshark> That is a most interesting source. You are right it leaves no doubt that the <Sigmund Volk> we have at cg.com is the same gentleman you have found. Google translator gives the translated text below- including a link to this page! Where it says <"this chess site"> that is a hyperlik to this page. Most intriguing information thank you for finding it. ##########################
"Subsequently, S.Yu. Volk worked as a Pskov correspondent for Homeland, after evacuating Pskov, he served in propaganda courses in Riga with V.V. Pozdnyakov, and at the very end of the war he ended up in the KONR radio department (about which on occasion). After the war he remained in the West, collaborated with the Munich Institute for the Study of the USSR, in 1961 published several brochures about the Soviet space program: "On the path of space exploration", "Who was the first?" (should this be considered an absentee polemic with a brother who shot the documentary "The Satellite Speaks" in 1959?) But his main specialization as a journalist was sports: in 1956 he published the book Professionalism in Soviet Sport, a biographical note in which:
The author of this work S. Nevsky (Wolf Sigismund Yulianovich) kind. in Petersburg (1911). In the Soviet Union, he was a candidate for the title of master of chess. Now lives in West Germany, where he performs in chess competitions. After the war, he placed a number of scientific research works on chess, as well as on the issue of physical culture movement in the USSR.
allows us to find the repeated champion of Bavaria and the holder of the German Cup of Chess - national master Sigmund Wolk - under this Germanized version of his name S.U. Volk went down in the history of chess. For some reason, the list of his games on <this chess site Sigmund Wolk > ends in 1959, but there is no doubt that he took part in chess tournaments further. But ironically, he was not remembered by this, or rather, not quite by this.
In southern Germany they like chess. Every self-respecting small town has a chess club (some were founded as far back as the last century), and the visits of master-tourists to them are diligently recorded in the annals stored in club cabinets (and now on club websites). Since the mid-50s, Sigmund Volk has traveled more than a dozen towns, only occasionally retreating to more eminent guests: Tigran Petrosyan or Ludek Pahman. The program usually was like this: on the first evening, a simultaneous game, then a festive banquet, and the next day, a simultaneous blind game - in the last discipline Volk was especially good, as chroniclers recall to this day.
In the photo below, Volk is in the background during a blindfold session." |
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Aug-23-19
| | jessicafischerqueen:
In his biography of <Elmars Zemgalis> John Donaldson reprints a long (and very interesting) article written in 1947. He lists the author as "Polish born DP Sigmund Wotkowsky," and the article is called "Chess Among DPs in Germany." Within the text of Wotkowsky's own article, he refers to himself in the 3rd person, confirming his birth place: "Wotkowsky, Polish born, attracted attention by his victory over Dr. Roedl, a well known German chess master, in a match of six games (score 3 1/2 - 2 1/2) in 1947." -John Donaldson "Elmars Zemgalis: Grandmaster without the Title" (Pomeranian Publishing 2001), pp. 28-30 |
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Aug-23-19
| | jessicafischerqueen:
I suppose we should keep the bio notation that Wotokowsky-Volk was born in "Russia," since in 1911 Poland was part of the "Russian Empire." |
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Sep-30-22
 | | FSR: This dude is old. |
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Sep-30-22
 | | beatgiant: <FSR>
The oldest IM I find via ratings.fide.com is Andreas Dueckstein. Actually they also still list Iosif Vatnikov and Ridha Belkadi, who would be older if still living, but we list them as deceased in 2012-2013. Maybe FIDE is confirming life of players and removing records of deceased ones on some periodic schedule like every 10 years. Based on that, I'm guessing IM Volk passed away sometime before 2012. I tried looking up "Professionalism in Soviet Sport" on worldcat and found the following hit: https://www.worldcat.org/title/1334... And his identity file there
https://worldcat.org/identities/np-...
shows years of life as 1911-.
Library of Congress has the same book, plus "On the path of space exploration" (which they list as "Po puti zavoevanii︠a︡ kosmosa") https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/holdi... and it also shows years of life as 1911-. Unfortunately, these sources don't have any further biographical details. Does Germany have a national library catalog online? If so, that would be a good lead. The worldcat record shows the publisher as Institut po izuchenii︠u︡ SSSR (Institute of USSR studies), Munich. |
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Sep-30-22
| | beatgiant: As to place of birth, <whiteshark>'s source above shows it as St. Petersburg, Russia (not Poland as <jessicafischerqueen>'s source claims). |
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Sep-30-22
| | beatgiant: I found the Deutsch National Bibliothek site dnb.de, and it lists three works by Wolk: bios of Geller, Spassky and Tamara Press, published by Institute for the Study of USSR in 1965 as part of a series called "Porträts der UdSSR-Prominenz." |
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Sep-30-22
| | FSR: <beatgiant> FIDE seems to think that Ken Smith (who died in 1999) is still alive. https://ratings.fide.com/profile/20... |
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| Sep-30-22 | | ZoboBear 000000001: <FSR> it's an unfortunate fact that FIDE's policy is to retire a FIDE id upon the death of a player allowing it to be reused (e.g. Bent Larsen's FIDE id has been recycled). This has the obvious disadvantage that FIDE id's can never be properly used for a chess DB. And it also means that FIDE will potentially be out of date for those players whose death notifications are missed (especially those who retire from active player for decades before passing). . |
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Sep-30-22
| | FSR: <ZoboBear 000000001> Strange policy, both for the reasons you note and because FIDE's 7-digit ID is enough to accommodate 10 million players. Since there are only about 350,000 players with active or inactive FIDE ratings (https://www.fide.com/news/288) I don't see any present need to recycle ID numbers. |
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Sep-30-22
| | beatgiant: I tried a quick search on the schachbund.de national rating list, but apparently one needs a registered account to look up player details. Maybe one of our German kibitzers can follow up with that. |
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| Sep-30-22 | | whiteshark: Historic <Wolk> video footage (Dec 1963): https://www.sr-mediathek.de/index.p... (~1m:11s) German chess master <Sigmund Wolk> goes from board to board. At a simultaneous tournament in Gersheim, he competes against 28 players at the same time. After 6.5 hours, the battle is fought... |
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| Oct-01-22 | | ZoboBear 000000001: <FSR> maybe a little of the rationale is that some portion of the FIDE id is used to encode the Federation of the player. http://chessforallages.blogspot.com... https://zanchess.wordpress.com/2014... and
https://zanchess.wordpress.com/2014... |
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Oct-02-22
 | | Stonehenge: Is this Volk? |
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Oct-02-22
| | FSR: <ZoboBear 000000001> In that case, FIDE's policy of recycling ID numbers makes a lot more sense. |
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Mar-29-24
| | beatgiant: He appears in the German wikipedia article "Liste deutscher Schachspieler" here, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste..., where the died column has "nach 1972." On the other hand, he also appears in "Liste der Nationalen Meister des Deutschen Schachbundes" here https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste... and the died column is left blank. Still, it seems very unlikely he is still living. |
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Apr-01-24
| | beatgiant: <whiteshark> In your kibitz of Aug-21-19 above you title him an IM. Do you have a source for that? The German wikipedia articles I cite above call him a national master only. |
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| Apr-02-24 | | vonKrolock: He presented at least this Study:
WOLK, Sigmund
"Schach-Echo", 20 Jan 1955 (61)
click for larger view
+ (white to play and win) 4+4
Solution:
*** ( as displayed in YACPDB, contributed by R. Staudte) 1.♔d6? ♘c7 2.♘e7+ ♔d8 3.a8=♕+ ♘×a8 4.♘d5 ♔c8 5.♔e7 ♘c7 1.♘d4? ♘c7 2.♔d6 ♔b7! 3.♔×d7 ♘×b5! 4.♘×b5 ♔a8 1.♔e8? ♘c7+ 2.♔e7 ♔b7
1.♘d6+ ♔c7
2.♘e8+!
2...♔c8 3.♔d6! ♔d8
4.♘f6 ♘c7 5.♔e5!
5...♔c8!
6.♘d5! ♘a8
7.♔f6!
7...♔d8 8.♔f7
8...♔c8 9.♔e7 d6 10.♔e8 ♔b7 11.♔d7 ♔×a7 12.♔c8 ♘c7 13.♔×c7
8...d6 9.♔e6
7...♔b7 8.♔e7 ♔×a7 9.♔×d7 ♔b7 10.♔d6
10...♔b8 11.♔c6 ♔a7 12.♘c7
10...♔c8 11.♔c6 ♔b8 12.♘×b6 ♘c7 13.♘d7+ ♔c8 14.b6
7.♔d6? ♔b7 8.♘b4 ♘c7! 9.♔e5! ♔c8 10.♘a6 ♘a8 11.♔d6 ♔d8! 12.♘b8 ♘c7 13.♘c6+ d×c6 14.♔×c6 ♘a8!
6.♘e8? ♘a8 7.♘d6+ ♔c7 8.♔d5 ♔d8 9.♔e4 ♔c7 10.♔e5 ♔d8 11.♔f6 ♔c7 12.♔e7
5...d6+ 6.♔f5 ♔c8 7.♘d5! ♘a8 8.♔e6 ♔b7 9.♔d7
4.♘g7? ♘c7 5.♘e6+ d×e6 6.♔c6 ♘a8!
2...♔b7 3.♔×d7 ♔×a7 4.♔c8
2.♘c4? d5!
2.♔e8? ♔×d6 3.♔d8 ♔e6! 4.♔c8 d5 5.♔b7 ♔d7 6.♔×a8 ♔c8 |
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Jan-07-25
 | | PawnSac: < FSR: This dude is old. > According to the CG database..
SIGMUND WOLK
(born Dec-09-1911, 113 years old) Russia (federation/nationality Germany)
Pseudonym: Sigmund Wotkowsky
..this would make him the oldest chess player alive right now |
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Kibitzing
